


In the Corner

by acedavestrider



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Abuse, M/M, Sexual Abuse, i swear its better than it sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 17:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17125649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acedavestrider/pseuds/acedavestrider
Summary: You're hurt, you love, you heal.





	In the Corner

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings for semi-descriptive physical and sexual abuse, please take care of yourself and dont read if you dont think you can handle it!

You’ve upset your brother. 

He found out you were talking to a girl from school and now he’s radiating irritation and disappointment, despite not saying anything. When the sun starts to set, he picks up his sword and gestures to you, and you follow him to the roof with your own sword in hand, anticipation fluttering at your heart. 

He doesn’t go easy on you. Your bro pounds you into the concrete and doesn’t let up, not even when you fall, when you ask him to stop. When you drop your sword he takes to beating you with his fists instead, and doesn’t stop until he tires himself out, which takes a while. He leaves you curled in a ball on the rooftop, and it takes you a long time to gather the energy to stand. 

In the bathroom, you tend to your wounds. You have bruises mixed with sword cuts and a few broken bones. You have to set a couple of your fingers and splint them with popsicle sticks, and you take a handful of aspirin to help with the pain. You’ve got a black eye and you’re thankful for your shades; no one will question you at school in the morning if they can’t see your injuries. 

You limp to your bedroom, and pretend like nothing is wrong as you text John one-handed. You can’t fall asleep when night comes, too sore and beaten, too on edge to relax. 

You don’t talk to anyone else from school.

* * *

 

You’re twelve when it first happens, barely pubescent. Your bro approaches you with two beers and a little smile, an expression you’re not familiar with. You can recognize the tight line of his mouth when you stumble during your strifes and disappoint him, or the quirk of his eyebrow when he’s anticipated your next move and blocked a swing from your sword, but you’ve never seen him smile. Grin, maybe. Smirk, of course. But never smile. 

He hands you one of the beers and you take it with a questioning look. He doesn’t speak, of course he doesn’t, just taps his knuckle against your chin as if to say, “Drink up.” And you do, because you’re a kid and drinking alcohol is still a contributing factor in the concept of coolness to you. The beer tastes gross and doesn’t quench your thirst at all but you drink it anyways to make bro proud of you. You just want him to be proud of you. 

When the first bottle is emptied, he hands you another. You start to get dizzy halfway through the second one, your senses muddled by the alcohol, and when bro leads you to his bedroom you follow him. 

He makes you take off your shirt first. You laugh at him, because you think he’s worried about the gash you got in your side from your latest fight, and wants to check on the healing process. The wound is a result of something he did to you, and you have the audacity to think you mean enough to him that he’d be worried, which is laughable in hindsight. You should know better. 

When he makes you take off your pants, and you start to question him, he grabs you by the hair and throws you onto his bed, all evidence of his smile disappearing in a second. You’re not lucid enough to react in time, not strong enough to push him off of you, the alcohol serving its purpose and making you pliant. 

You don’t remember much of what happens. Or at least, you choose not to. You remember bits and pieces, the beer blanking out parts of your memory, but you recall your face being pushed into the mattress, and pain. You don’t cry, not as it happens. You can’t, or bro will be mad at you. He doesn’t tolerate crying. 

Afterwords, he kicks you out of his room with little fanfare. He gives you this look, like he’s satisfied with your performance as a host for his activities, and it tears into your stomach like a razor blade. You love it, and you hate it, and it rips you apart. 

You limp to your room, sore and confused and dazed, and nothing hits you until the door latches closed. You sit on the floor with your back to the wall and hold in sobs for an hour, your phone clenched in one hand while the other covers your mouth. Several texts come in from your friends, naively wondering how your night’s going, but you don’t answer. You don’t think you can fake it, not this time. 

Eventually you calm down, and crawl into your bed with aching limbs and tired eyes. You don’t sleep until you hear bro leave the apartment at six in the morning.

* * *

 

The game starts and your training kicks in; you’re able to slaughter the imps in the Land of Heat and Clockwork like they’re little more than ants in your path. Part of you revels in the feeling of killing, but another part of you hates yourself for it. 

Your world is made of your biggest fears - unbearable heat, and the grinding sound of metal on metal. After a while you’re unable to stand the noise anymore, the clang of the gears and the grating of your sword against enemies. It reminds you too much of home. 

After a while you find your brother’s body, though you guess he’s technically your father, and you stand by his corpse for a long time, waiting to feel something. The only thing that crashes into you, waves breaking in your chest, is relief. It doesn’t turn into sadness or grief or sorrow, no matter how long you wait for the change. 

Terezi pesters you, and you break the sword in your brothers chest, and you feel nothing. When she eventually leaves you alone, you plant yourself on the ground next to his body and heave a sigh too deep for your thirteen year old body. There’s so much you want to say to him, yell at him, but you can’t speak. You want to tell him that he ruined you, that you hate him, that you’ll never forgive him. You want to thank him for the training that’s saved your life in the game of Sburb and spit in his face for making you strife with him when you were just a kid. But you just sit there, wait for tears to come. They don’t, and when you get up, face the game again, you feel a weight lifted off your chest.

* * *

 

You like Karkat the moment you meet him. He’s loud, and abrasive, and wears his heart on his sleeve. You always know what he’s thinking because he basically shouts it for the world to hear, so different from your brother it almost makes you dizzy. With bro you had to guess what he was thinking, infer what he wanted from you via small clues in the form of an eyebrow twitch or a pursed lip. It was exhausting, and Karkat is a breath of fresh air. 

You naturally gravitate towards each other, finding one another in can town one day. Karkat gripes and bitches about Terezi and Vriska’s antics, about Rose and Kanaya being all over each other. You make a comment about how the universe is pairing you off in twos, and how the only reasonable conclusion is for the two of you to hang out together, to keep the universe satisfied. This makes him bitch a little more, complaining that paradox space is fucking around specifically to make his life miserable, but he chills with you anyways. 

Can town becomes your daily hang out spot, and one of you is usually there already when the other shows up. You talk a lot and don’t get very much done, much to the chagrin of the Mayor, but you find yourself laughing and shooting the shit with Karkat like you’ve known him your whole life. 

Eventually can town becomes secondary, and the two of you take to drawing stuff on the concrete floor in chalk. Karkat’s art style is scribbly and full of right angles, while yours is smoother and round. One day he shows you a collection of red and brown lines on the floor and declares, “It’s you!” 

You smile, and something tugs at your chest, something you can’t put your finger on. It reminds you of fear, but the cold sweat and tingle down your spine don’t come with it this time. You make your own chalk rendition of Karkat on the floor and he makes fun of it endlessly, but takes a picture of it with his phone. 

When you’ve covered every square inch of can town with doodles of each other and random shit, you move to Karkat’s room. He shows you the books he likes to read, and the movies he spends a stupid amount of time watching, and he forces you to watch a romantic comedy with him. It’s not as bad as you think it will be, but you still comment on every stupid scene and all the blunders the main characters make. Instead of telling you to shut up, Karkat matches your quips with ones of his own, insulting your taste in cinema. The feeling in your chest comes back, stronger this time, and you ignore it.

* * *

 

The first time you realize you have feelings for Karkat, it sends you into a full panic attack. You’re sitting with him on the couch, an arm around his shoulder, and it hits you like a truck to the gut. You like him, as more than friends. The moment you consider the possibility that you might not be straight, that you have feelings for another guy, you remove yourself from Karkat and flashstep into the hallway before he has the chance to say anything. 

You find a remote room at the edge of the meteor, full of strange machines and tanks of odd creatures, and sit with your back against the cool stone wall. You heart pounds out of control and you feel tears prick at your eyes. You blink rapidly, willing them away, you don’t want your bro to hear you - 

You take a breath. Your bro is dead, he can’t hear you, or see you, or hurt you. He’s not here to tell you that you’re not allowed to talk to anyone but him, to tell you that he’s the only one who’s allowed to touch you. He’s not here to humiliate you, or hit you when you mess up, or tell you you’re not worthy of love. He’s not here, and you don’t need him to be. 

You sit in the dark for a long time, working out your feelings in your head. You like Karkat, you remind yourself. You really like Karkat. When you’ve calmed down, the thought makes you smile.

* * *

 

Karkat kisses you first, two years into your trip, and a few months after you admit your feelings for him. You haven’t really talked about it much, and he’s so wrapped up in quadrant shit that you keep your feelings to yourself for the most part. You’ve had to deal with your own shit regarding your sexuality, and it’s only after extensive talks with Rose that you start to feel okay again. 

The kiss is short, so short that you don’t have enough time to react. He does it while you’re talking, and shuts you up with his lips on yours in the middle of a rant about something you immediately forget. When it’s over, he’s blushing so hard you start to worry for his health. He asks you if you’re okay. You kiss him again in answer, properly this time, your chest aching. 

You talk for a long time. You explain human sexuality to him for the third time, trying to get him to understand why you were so wrapped up in it, why it had been such a crisis. He compares it to the quadrant system, and how he doesn’t think it fits the way he feels about you. “I want you in every quadrant,” he admits. 

You kiss again, experimenting, exploring, and you ignore the thoughts in the back of your head that are trying to interrupt your happiness. Images of your brother float around in your mind, telling you how disgusting you are, and you push them away. 

* * *

You meet up with the kids from the new session. Roxy is asking you questions a mile a minute. She’s curious about your relationship, asks you if you’re still a virgin with a wink. You say no, and everyone looks at Karkat with sly smiles, but Karkat is looking at you with narrowed eyes and drawn up eyebrows. You haven’t slept with him.

* * *

 

You meet Dirk. You expect him to tower over you like your bro, to radiate the same intimidating energy, to spit insults at you like you’re nothing. But he’s shorter than you, and quiet, and shy, and a little awkward. 

You were his idol in his timeline. You swallow, hard, wonder how you managed to get such a raw cut of the asshole deck with your own brother. You have to remind yourself as he speaks, over and over again, that he’s not your brother. 

When you tell him about your bro, about what he did to you in as little detail as possible, he frowns, too deep for such a young face. He’s worried he has the potential to become like bro, to be hurtful, to inflict pain on others. You worry the same thing. 

But then he lets you hug him, and it doesn’t feel dangerous or inappropriate or wrong. It feels safe. And you know he’s different.

* * *

 

You fight for your life at the end of the game. You can hardly focus, the sound of metal clangs and fists colliding with bodies almost too much for you to bear. You feel like you’re being pulled apart, thirteen year old you and current you fighting over who gets to be present while you strife. You mind is split into too many parts, trying to focus on fighting, on your stance, on your technique. Bro’s voice echoes in your head, putting you down and telling you to straighten up your posture, adjust your weight, watch the turn of your shoulder. 

You can’t do it, you’re too distracted by his memory. You start to lose your edge, your parries sloppy and your footwork uncoordinated. You’re going to die here, inches away from the final prize of the game, and it’ll be no one’s fault but yours. 

But then Karkat comes to mind, and slowly starts replacing your brother in your head. You try to remember what it’s like to kiss him, to hold him, be held by him. You remember holding his hand, feeling safe in his arms, talking to him for hours on end. You remember him kissing you before saying goodbye and telling you, “I’ll see you afterwards.” 

The world rushes back to you, bright and loud after being dulled by your thoughts, and you fight. And you win.

* * *

 

The new planet is vibrant and colorful, and you get to live here with your friends and boyfriend. You create a home to live in, close to John and Rose and Jade, and you start to grow up, heal. 

Karkat doesn’t push you, but eventually it all comes out, everything your brother did to you. He doesn’t say anything while you tell him, doesn’t make any indication that he’s listening except for the occasional nod, and the tears in his eyes. You don’t know when you start crying, whether it’s the part about strifing or the sexual abuse or the unbearable fear, but by the end you can hardly speak. Karkat threads his fingers through yours and squeezes you hand, tells you he’s proud of you for telling him, and that he understands. 

He doesn’t, no one does, but that’s okay. You’re okay. 

* * *

It’s your twenty-first birthday, and your friends have thrown a small party for you. It’s nothing special, just a get together at your house, but it feels like a momentous occasion to you. 

You get a few gifts from everyone and open them to cheers and yelling from your friends. Some of them are inappropriate, as you expected, and others are heartfelt enough to make a knot form in your throat. 

You have fun, enjoy the company of your loved ones, and when they leave you’re left with Karkat to snuggle up with in bed. He tells you how proud he is of you, how far you’ve come, how he can’t wait to spend his life with you. You smile, and kiss him, and no thoughts about your brother, or that your love is wrong, or that you’re going to be in trouble come to mind. 

And you’re happy. 

**Author's Note:**

> i know the formatting of this was strange but i wanted to try something like this where its just little snippets of daves life from his abusive past to his happier present
> 
> hope this was okay, i know writing abuse can be kind of fucked up but i didnt want this to just be abuse porn with no happy ending, dave deserves better than that
> 
> anyways thanks for reading! and i always appreciate comments if you have any!


End file.
